The Elegant Eighties

I

I CAME into the world in Syracuse, New York, in the year that Edison exhibited his first electric lamp and the first American horseless carriage was patented. And I was to witness the introduction of such other epoch-making devices as the telephone, the electric streetcar, the film camera, the motion picture, the airplane, the dirigible, the oil-burning engine, the radio.

It was a fascinating period in which to grow up. Though America had graduated from knee pants to long trousers, it still wore its trousers tucked into its boot tops. We still had a Frontier; on the Western plains our soldiers were fighting Indians; civilization had only nibbled at the vast region between the Mississippi and the Sierras. The tide of immigration had set in, but it had done little to broaden our horizons. We had remained essentially American in our standards and our point of view, regarding everything foreign with contempt and suspicion.

The annals of the white man in our little valley began upward of three hundred years ago, in 1615, when a dozen Frenchmen and half a thousand Huron warriors swept down from the Northern wilderness in their slim canoes to attack the tribe which guarded the council fire of the Five Nations on the shore of Onondaga Lake. Champlain’s expedition, however, left so little impress on the region that to-day even the route he followed is a matter of dispute. Forty years later came Father Le Moyne, a missionary sent out by the Society of Jesus to propagate the faith. He succeeded in winning the confidence of the Onondagas, who showed him, near the shores of the lake, a spring which they shunned because they attributed its unpleasant taste to the presence of an evil spirit. The priest explained that the spring, far from having malefic qualities, denoted the presence of a subterranean salt lake. This was welcome news to the redmen, who heretofore had paid exorbitant prices in furs for European salt.

Though probably he never realized it, Father Le Moyne’s discovery of salt did far more for the advancement of civilization in this region than all his evangelical efforts, plus those of all his fellow laborers in the Lord’s Vineyard. For it marked the beginning of an era of colonization and prosperity in Central New York. Settlers began drifting into the Onondaga country and soon, despite the crudeness of their methods, were extracting salt in quantities which steadily increased. The centre of the industry was a small settlement, originally known as Webster’s Landing but later and appropriately renamed Salina, which had sprung up around a trading post at the southern end of the lake. But in 1824, for no reason which has ever been satisfactorily explained, the name of the growing community was changed to Syracuse. The reason is to be found, perhaps, in the craze for classical names then sweeping upstate New York.

Until well into the last quarter of the nineteenth century Syracuse was the principal source of salt supply for the entire United States. Not only was the industry the basis of most of the early local fortunes, but pressure from those interested in salt making crystallized the demand for the Erie Canal, completed in 1825, which proved to be the greatest single factor in the remarkable development and prosperity of the Empire State. Trace the development of this region back to its beginnings, however, and you will see that it was primarily due to an obscure Jesuit priest. Yet, so far as I am aware, the city which grew up around the salt springs he discovered has erected to Father Le Moyne no memorial of any sort.

It would be surprising were my earliest recollections not associated with the manufacture of salt, for I was born within half a mile of the salt lands on the shores of Onondaga Lake. Though the industry was then already on the decline, that part of the city in which we lived was almost surrounded by salt vats, some of them within sight of our house. There must have been tens of thousands of these vats in the immediate vicinity of Syracuse. Yet to-day the sole relic of that vanished industry is a single vat in the Salt Museum.

The method employed in extracting salt was known as the solar system. Brine from the subterranean pools was pumped into the vats — shallow wooden cisterns about twelve feet square, raised on piles a few feet above the ground, with movable wooden roofs — and the water evaporated by exposure to the sun, leaving a thick residue of salt crystals, which were ground and refined into the article of commerce.

The greatest enemy of the salt makers was rain, for weeks of sunshine could be counteracted by an hour’s downpour. And rain never could be predicted with any certainty, for in those days meteorology was anything but an exact science. Consequently, men who had keen eyes and ‘ weather sense ’ were stationed in lofty watchtowers which rose like lighthouses above the sea of vats. When the watchers descried an ominous cloud on the horizon, a brazen warning was clanged out by the alarm bells. Thereupon hundreds of workmen, aided by their womenfolk and children, would drop all else to push the rollered roofs over the vats in frantic haste. The lowering clouds, the sudden tocsin, the hordes of scurrying workers, the milelong rows of vat. covers rolling forward in gray-brown billows, formed a singular and stirring spectacle.

The dim, dank space beneath the vats was a wonderful place for small boys to go adventuring, for the wooden piles stretched endlessly, like trees in a gloomy forest; overhead the seeping brine coagulated into stalactites, — white, yellow, brown, henna-red, — which often assumed the most fantastic shapes. Some of the salt blocks covered many acres, and crawling beneath them on hands and knees was as fascinating as exploring a pirate’s cave — though hard on the pants. One had the eerie feeling that almost anything might happen in those stalactite-hung, bat-infested reaches. And those shivery premonitions were realized one day when some other boys and I, playing Indian beneath the vats, came upon a corpse. The man had been murdered, it turned out. Judging from the smell, he must have been a long time dead.

II

My first impression — I must have been about three — is of a large, foursquare house standing amid stately trees and shaven lawns. It was a brick house (I was told later that the bricks had come in ballast from Holland), but, unlike the ugly, dull red bricks used today, these were in tone something between an old rose and a vermilion. Across the front of the house ran a row of tall white columns, copied from those of the Parthenon, and all the windows, upstairs and down, had bright green blinds which creaked and groaned eerily in a high wind. Between the back piazza and the lofty hawthorn hedge separating our property from that of our next-door neighbor stretched the broad strip of gayly flowered chintz which was my grandmother’s garden. From the granite steppingstone at the side door a hedged and graveled drive swept in a spacious C to the white gateposts on West Genesee Street.

Let me see if I can picture for you what lay beyond those gateposts. If I am overly meticulous as to details, it is because I should like you to see my home town as I first remember it, when it had a population of 62,701. I recall the figure because I liked to believe that the ultimate numeral represented me. This tended to give me a pleasant sense of individuality and self-importance.

Bisecting the city into ‘the North Side’ and ‘the South Side’ was the Erie Canal, which for nearly a century provided slow but inexpensive transportation between the Hudson and the Great Lakes. The North Side was bisected, in turn, by the Oswego Canal, which connected the Erie Canal with Lake Ontario. The canals, with their numerous bridges, gave the city a pseudo-Venetian aspect which was quite charming, particularly at night, when the lights were mirrored in the water. But this suggestion of romance disappeared in late autumn, when the water was drawn off. From then until the resumption of navigation in the early spring they were huge, noisome ditches, their bottoms strewn with all sorts of refuse, including an occasional dead cat.

My great-uncle, Alanson Thorpe, frequently traveled by canal from Syracuse to Albany, making the journey of one hundred and fifty miles in about three days. Life was moving too fast anyway, he said, and canal travel gave him time for rest and meditation.

It must have been very pleasant sitting at ease under the deck awnings, watching the enchanting panoramas of the Onondaga and Mohawk valleys unroll. For the canal meandered through a singularly lovely countryside: past fields which in the spring were white with scented blossoms and in summer yellow with ripened grain; past sloping meadows where sleek cattle stood knee-deep in lush green grass; past trim white farmsteads and tranquil hamlets dozing in the shade of venerable elms. Along its banks, usually at the locks, sprang up numerous communities which attained a modest prosperity trading with the ‘canawlers.’ These were a robustious lot, as picturesque and profane as the steamboatmen of the Mississippi, and the canal-side taverns, many of which still stand, were often the scenes of drinking bouts and brawls which not infrequently ended in bloodshed.

The glimpses I obtained of life on ‘the raging Erie Canal’ always stirred my imagination. I wondered whence the great, blunt-nosed, gaudily painted craft had come and whither they were going, and I longed to go with them, particularly those bound for the West. I never tired of watching the mule teams straining against the long towropes, the redfaced captains in their peaked blue caps and brass-buttoned jackets lounging against the tillers, their womenfolk knitting placidly beneath the awnings or peering from the trimly curtained windows. The skippers were in the main good-natured men and usually would give a small boy rides between locks if he behaved himself. But you should have heard them when they were overhauled and delayed at the locks by the steam packets. Their swearing on such occasions was something to marvel at.

III

For some reason Syracusans did n’t patronize the hotels very much. In fact, many citizens never set foot inside one except to attend a convention or a banquet. Perhaps this was because, being inherently conservative, they did n’t care to mix with strangers; perhaps because they preferred the more intimate atmosphere of their clubs, of which, not counting the German gathering places on the North Side, the city had three, each catering to a distinct element of society.

A few blocks up James Street, somewhat removed from the hurly-burly of the city, was — and still is — the staid old Century Club, the rendezvous of our local aristocracy. Its members, mainly older men, represented the wealthy and conservative element. There they played whist or poker for comparatively high stakes, scanned the stock-market reports, pored over La Vie Parisienne (the Century Club was the only place in town where one could find that risqué periodical), read the New York Tribune, discussed politics, declared the country was going to the dogs, and blamed it all on Grover Cleveland and the Democrats.

The Syracuse Club, which occupied a small building in the downtown district, was the favorite rendezvous of the young bloods. In its cozy bar, free from the disapproving eyes of their elders, they could drink till the milkman came — and frequently did. It was strategically situated, for from its spacious bay window, on a rainy day, the members could catch provocative glimpses of wellturned ankles and shapely legs as the owners raised their skirts to pick their way across the muddy cobbles of Warren Street. The Syracuse Club boys were great cutups. On one occasion they took the fur-lined coat of a diminutive Beau Brummel, George McChesney, turned it inside out, and laid it on the doorstep. It was a wet day and incoming members, taking the garment for a doormat, wiped their feet on it. The coat was pretty well ruined when George retrieved it.

Less expensive, less exclusive, in fact distinctly middle-class, but very popular with merchants and professional men, was the Citizens’ Club, which had a large membership and comfortable premises on the upper floor of a business block. If you wanted a man in a hurry, anti he was n’t at his place of business or his house, it was a pretty safe bet that you could find him playing whist at the Citizens’ Club or watching the pool and billiard tournaments which were always in progress.

Lacking country clubs, or, indeed, any other gathering place for social purposes, boys and girls in their middle and late teens congregated at the drugstore in Vanderbilt Square run by Henry Dwight. It was a convenient place for meetings, clandestine or otherwise, for making dates for dances, picnics, and buggy rides, for leaving parcels and buying postage stamps; and the long marble counter before the soda-water fountain was always crowded with pretty girls and their attentive escorts. One day my curiosity was aroused by a workman who was kneeling beneath the counter with a hatchet and a basket. I asked him what he was doing. ‘I’ve got to come here once a month,; he grumbled, ‘and chop away the wads of chewing gum left by these damn kids.’

The saloon was frequently referred to, usually by those engaged in the liquor and brewing business, as ‘the poor man’s club.’ It goes without saying that there were saloons of all kinds, from O’Conner and Wittner’s Kirk Café, as respectable as a church, where even the most valued customer could n’t get another drink once the bartender decided he had had enough, or Loos and Kaufman’s ‘sample room,’ to dives of the lowest sort.

Matty’s Café, at the corner of Warren and Fayette streets, was our local Tammany Hall, for the proprietor, Frank Matty, was the city’s Democratic boss. There the politicians hung out, and on almost any night of the week a quorum of the Common Council could be found in the back room of the establishment. Over big black cigars and tall glasses of lager, municipal questions were decided, contracts awarded, jobs handed out. For our local government was rotten with graft. You could get almost anything if you stood in with ‘the boys’ and were willing to come across. And the same was true of all the other cities in the state. For a good many years Syracuse was run from the smoke-filled back room of Matty’s Café. But the politicians eventually fell victims to their own arrogance and conceit. Shrewd enough in some respects, they failed to realize that civic consciousness was waking up.

Bartenders were, as a rule, discreet and tactful men, often well educated. They kept their ears open and their mouths shut. Those employed in the better saloons were noted for their honesty, at least so far as it concerned the patrons of the establishment, and they frequently were entrusted with the stakes wagered on horse races and prize fights. Often, seeing a customer drinking too much, they would persuade him to hand over his money and jewelry, for which they would give him a receipt. His valuables were returned to him the next day — or when he sobered up. Most bartenders, however, considered the ‘knockdown’ a perfectly legitimate source of profit, which explains why they wore diamonds and eventually went into business on their own account. But the doom of the knockdown came with the invention of the cash register, a device regarded by ‘barkeeps’ as an outrageous invasion of their personal rights.

In the saloons of the period there was n’t nearly as much rough stuff as was asserted by the prohibitionists, for the proprietors realized that barroom brawls were bad for business. Consequently many saloons, particularly those patronized by the rougher class, kept bouncers, usually ex-prize fighters, whose business it was to eject customers who could n’t hold their liquor and became rambunctious.

The saloons carried on a brisk competition in free lunches. Some of them attracted trade by offering a substantial meal to anyone who bought a drink. For the price of a glass of ‘suds’ you could help and rehelp yourself to cold chicken, ham, tongue, lamb, and roast beef, German sausage, potato salad, Saratoga chips, sandwiches, crackers and cheese, doughnuts, pickles, olives, and, of course, salted nuts, the last being very effective in stimulating thirst. Though there was no limit to the amount you could eat, the saloonkeepers figured that only about one patron in ten would make a hog of himself.

In the ’80s and ’90s drinking was not as universal as it is to-day, for in those pre-cocktail days very few women touched liquor, and some even declared that ‘lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.’ If there was not as much drinking, however, there was far more drunkenness. Acute alcoholism accounted for at least six of my contemporaries, who, as the prohibitionists put it, ended in drunkards’ graves. And one was always encountering men in various stages of inebriation — mellow, oiled, fuddled, lit, tipsy, squiffed, sozzled, stewed, soused, jagged, plastered, fighting drunk, crying drunk, dead to the world. Such distinctions were too fine, however, for any save the cognoscenti. Even they differed as to whether a man was drunker when soused or jagged. It was a mooted question, and regarding it there were two schools of thought.

Next to the saloon came the barbershop, which served as a sort of club after business hours. Here penny ante and pinochle, euchre and casino, checkers and chess, were played; gold watches, turkeys, and the like were raffled off. Here you could scan the local papers and the sporting periodicals; place bets on elections, horse races, or prize fights; hear the latest local gossip.

But gone is the old-time tonsorial parlor with its black-walnut fixtures, its chairs upholstered in carpet which retained the body heat of the previous occupant and in hot weather gave his successor a Turkish bath. Gone are the tiers of compartments containing the shaving mugs of the regular customers, each labeled in old English script with the name and sometimes the lodge insignia of its owner. Gone are the pink, blue, and yellow vases containing bay rum, ‘auxiliator,’ and hair restorer, gone the open jar of vaseline employed for shaping the locks into curls or waves on either side of the forehead. Gone is the brilliantine which gave lustre to the burnsides, Galways, County Downs, Arthurs, Napoleons, Victor Emmanuels, sluggers, and Vandykes. Gone, too, are Puck, Judge, and the Police Gazette. And gone, let us hope, is the ‘barber’s itch,’ which provided such successful propaganda for Mr. Gillette.

IV

The two decades following the Civil War might aptly be called the Age of Cast Iron. For that unlovely material was regarded as indicating affluence, and it was used, in innumerable forms, for the embellishment of houses and grounds. The fashion came, I assume, from the South, particularly from Charleston and New Orleans, where cast iron had been employed architecturally, though usually with discrimination, for generations.

Great numbers of the houses in our section had balconies, verandah railings, occasionally even whole verandahs, of cast iron, usually in the popular ‘grapeleaf’ design, and some few of the older, neo-Greek residences had cast-iron grilles in the windows of the upper front rooms. These grilles, in conjunction with the huge columns outside, permitted only a modicum of sunlight to enter the rooms, whose occupants lived, consequently, in a prison gloom.

The lawns of the more pretentious homes were frequently enclosed by spiked fences of cast iron and littered with cast-iron stags, oversized Newfoundlands, and greyhounds. Smirking cherubs of cast iron stood in cast-iron basins holding aloft cast-iron umbrellas from which squirted fountains. Even the most awful examples of this ferruginous statuary were regarded as works of art, which, if not quite the equal of marble ones, were nevertheless considered very tasty and refined. The prudish commented unfavorably, however, on the cast-iron figure of a nude nymph which adorned a neighbor’s lawn. In fact, there was talk of circulating a round robin demanding that the owner provide the shameless hussy with an apron.

Syracuse was noted throughout the country for its fine old elms, whose branches interlaced, so that in summer the residential streets were covered with canopies of green. A decade or so before the Civil War my grandfather set out along West Genesee Street, at his own expense, four rows of elms, each more than a mile long. When one of the trees sickened and died, his concern was as great as though it had been a member of the family. By the turn of the century the street was one of the most beautiful in the United States, being considered second only to Euclid Avenue in Cleveland. But now, owing to the necessity of widening it, nearly all of its elms are gone. This is a commercial age, and beauty cannot be permitted to interfere with business — but I am glad that I was not there when those eighty-year-old giants were cut down.

The larger houses of the period were generally set far back from the street, surrounded by broad lawns kept in a state of velvety perfection by constant cutting, sprinkling, and rolling. The beauty of these green expanses was usually marred, however, by huge beds of geraniums and foliage plants in the form of stars, crescents, Maltese crosses, and other fanciful designs. Lyman C. Smith’s baronial home on James Street had its name, ‘Uarda,’ in floral letters which stretched right across the front lawn, suggestive of a hotel or a railway station. In the centre of my grandfather’s lawn was a floral S six yards long. Most visitors commented on it admiringly, but even as a boy I thought it atrocious.

‘Why,’ I asked our colored gardener, ‘you sticking those of’ geraniums in the lawn ? ’

‘Boy,’ he retorted, ‘doan yuh want dis-yere place to look high-toned?’

During the classical revival which swept the Middle Atlantic States between 1800 and 1830, a number of wellto-do Syracusans built houses which possessed real architectural distinction. They were neo-Greek in style, of vermilion handmade bricks set in white mortar, with bright green shutters and rows of tall white columns. The columns of the earlier houses were Doric or Ionic, but later this severe style gave way to the Corinthian. Running along the entire front of the house was the stoop, — an Americanization of stoep, a Dutch term which was gradually supplanted by the Italian piazza, — used in hot weather as an outdoor sitting room. These were the stateliest dwellings produced in America outside the Old South and certain sections of New England, the architects having studiously adhered to classical lines. Yet few remain. For after the turn of the century the growing Syracuse, swollen with self-importance, eager to show that it was up-to-date, displayed an indecorous haste in tearing down much that was fine.

Along in the '50s, upstate New York was visited by James Renwick, the architect of the Smithsonian Institution, who left his impress on the region in the form of numerous residences of a quaint and not unpleasing design. They were really miniature editions of Tudor manor houses modified to meet American purses and conditions. Built in most cases of stone, they were characterized by steeply pitched slate roofs, numerous gables, pointed arches, groined ceilings, narrow windows with diamond panes, and invariably were gloomy within. One of the best examples was the so-called Renwick Castle, occupied for many years by the Yates family, but now owned by Syracuse University. Renwick himself described the style as Norman, but the late Bertram Goodhue, one of the most brilliant architects America has known, caustically dubbed it ‘Hudson River Gothic.’

During the two decades immediately following the Civil War there sprang up a great number of houses, generally referred to as mansions, in a bastard style which combined Corinthian and Clydesdale, Renaissance and rococo, Gothic and General Grant, Queen Anne and Mary Ann, with some of the builders’ own ideas thrown in. The eczematous offspring of architectural miscegenation, they erupted with excrescences and sores — towers, turrets, finials, gables, dormers, balconies, bay windows, portecocheres, and as much of the jigsaw work called ‘gingerbread’ as could possibly be tacked on. Examples of this appalling style, if such it may be called, are still to be found in the Middle West, — where pieces of black-walnut furniture are held to be ‘antiques,’ — but in our section, heaven be praised, most of them have been torn down.

Though in atrociously bad taste, the great houses of the '70s and ’80s were far surpassed, when it came to downright vulgarity, by the much more costly ones erected during the ‘easy-money days’ in the last decade of the century. This was an era of sudden fortunes, of politicians and contractors and speculators who became rich almost overnight. As much to impress the neighbors with their newly acquired affluence as to gratify their own longings for luxury, they proceeded to erect houses regardless of cost — or taste. The architects had orders to use only the most expensive materials — and the greater variety the better. ‘Give me everything you can think of,’ directed one of the newly rich. ‘I’m going to make the folks in this town sit up and take notice — and money talks.’

These seats (for ‘house’ is too plebeian a word) were often of gray granite or pinkish-brown sandstone, the latter not infrequently laboriously chiseled in convoluted designs which resembled nothing so much as nests of mammoth angleworms. Roofs of thick pink tile were supported by massive stone piers which could have borne the Brooklyn Bridge. Balconies and oriels and bay windows popped out from the most unexpected places. Wrought-iron weather vanes veered with the wind above pinnacles of slate. In some cases glass-balled lightning rods bristled from the roofs. The polished brass handrails which flanked the front steps were suggestive of a yacht. Cyclopean stone blocks formed the parapet of the terrace — which the owner usually referred to as ‘the front porch.’ The front door was, in all likelihood, of ‘golden oak.’ The glass panel in the centre was not designed so much to admit light as to display a curtain of expensive lace. Every house had its ‘sun porch’ — a glassed-in room furnished in wicker and flowered chintz; also at least one ‘picture window’ — a single pane of plate glass the size of a show window in a shop. That is what it was, in fact, for the curtains were seldom drawn at night and passers-by could catch intimate glimpses of the occupants’ domestic life.

In the bathroom of one of our local plutocrats was a stained-glass window depicting his wife garbed as an angel and bearing a sheaf of lilies, though it was common knowledge that the lady’s character was anything but angelic. But why such a window in the bathroom, you ask? Because the bathroom, with its fittings of white porcelain and gleaming nickel, was the owner’s pride and joy, and everyone who called was invited to inspect it. Such were our ‘show places.’ The term could hardly be improved on, unless by adding the prefix ‘holy.’

Yet I am not implying that my home town had more than its share of the vulgarities and hideosities inflicted on the country during America’s architectural reign of terror. Few communities outside New England escaped. For with the return of peace after Appomattox there came to this country the most completely inartistic period it has known since the days when its only dwellings were Indian wigwams. It has never been satisfactorily explained why, during the twoscore years following the Civil War, there should have so entirely disappeared from the American mind every scintilla of architectural and decorative good taste.

V

Pretty much of a pattern were the interiors of the older houses of the period. The front door usually bore a silver plate on which the owner’s name was inscribed in flowing script. The front hall was the Main Street of the house. The furniture consisted of a stand bearing a bowl filled to overflowing with yellowed visiting cards, — which, when the family was a large one, were left in enormous numbers, — three or four straight-back chairs, and a hatrack. This singular object, of mahogany or black walnut, resembled a large starfish with a mirror in the centre stuck on a post. Beneath was a receptacle for canes, parasols, and umbrellas. Frowning from the walls were gilt-framed family portraits: stern-faced men in high black stocks and flowered waistcoats; disapproving women in stiff black silk, nearly always with a cameo brooch at the neck. They were perpetrated by the journeymen artists who in the early days drove through the country. It is said that these itinerant painters often accepted board and lodging in payment for portraits. It is doubtful who got the best of such bargains, judging from the quality of the work.

At the right of the hall was the parlor, a place of decorum and gloom, rarely used save for weddings and funerals. The shades were kept drawn that the sun might not fade the carpet. One of the most significant events in American domestic history occurred in the late ’90s, when parlors were made over into ‘living rooms.’ That event, which let sunlight into so many homes, ought to rank with the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation.

The parlor was the largest room in the house, with the handsomest chairs, the finest tables, the biggest pictures. The floor was covered with a Brussels or Axminster carpet, strewn with flowers the size of cabbages in impossible colors. The use of gilt wallpaper was supposed to lend a room an air of opulence and was very de rigueur. At the tall windows were stiffly starched lace curtains which had to be ‘done up’ twice a season. Though usually there was a fireplace, it was almost never used, its presence being camouflaged by a silk ‘throw’ draped over the mantel. In the centre of the mantel was a ‘Rogers group’ of statuary in putty-colored clay — in some cases of President Lincoln and his cabinet, in others of the Three Graces. This example of the sculptor’s art was often flanked on one side by a glass dome within which reposed a cluster of immortelles or wax flowers, on the other by a vase from which sprouted a spray of peacock feathers.

In the corner stood a triangular piece of furniture appropriately known as a whatnot, its shelves cluttered with mementos of travel (vicarious or otherwise), such as a wood carving of the Lion of Lucerne, a small plaster model of one of the gateways of the Alhambra, a souvenir glass paperweight from Niagara Falls, almost certainly an olivewood box from the Holy Land. Displayed on marble-topped tables were expensively bound gift books — for show, not for reading. Among them were usually to be found the works of Shakespeare and Milton, Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the collected poems of Byron, Tennyson, Browning, Walt Whitman, and Longfellow, and, perhaps, a heavy tome entitled Battles and Heroes of theCivil War. On a small table by itself, occupying a place of honor, was the family Bible, a ponderous tome, illustrated with steel engravings, and, in the front, a register of the births, marriages, and deaths in the household for several generations; or the family photograph album, a massive volume bound in red or purple plush.

In one corner of our parlor, on a marble-topped stand, was a plaster figure of a nude maiden, her eyes modestly downcast, her wrists bound by a chain. I think it was entitled ‘The Greek Slave.’ I can’t imagine how my people came to acquire such a shameless presentment of the female form, though it was saved from outright sensuality by the drabness of the material, which was the color of a fish’s belly. Thinking quite innocently to improve it, I surreptitiously touched it up with water colors in flesh tints. The effect, while much more lifelike and pleasing, was not exactly chaste. A sound spanking was my reward for this early essay in art.

The sofas and more important pieces of furniture were upholstered in ecru satin or magenta plush. They were reserved for company; members of the family were not supposed to sit on them. Pinned to the backs were lace antimacassars — relics of the days when gentlemen smeared their hair with Macassar oil. The other pieces of furniture, usually good mahogany of the Federal period, were covered with black horsehair on which one was always slipping. How I loathe that material! On Sunday evenings my grandmother would take me to call on a neighbor, a Mrs. Judson. That kind soul’s idea of entertaining a small boy was to place him in a large horsehair rocker and set on his knees an illustrated Bible which must have weighed ten pounds. Then the two old ladies wondered why he was always sliding on to the floor. ‘Children are so restless. They are a great trial,’ my grandmother would remark apologetically.

The pictures in the parlor were nearly always depressing. Mingled with gloomy landscapes by Early American artists and oil copies of celebrated religious paintings were steel engravings. We did not have Landseer’s ‘Stag at Bay,’ which was to be found in nearly every home, but we did have in the front hall an engraving by Gustave Doré entitled ‘The Christian Martyrs.’ The scene was in the Roman Colosseum, where the remains of the martyrs were being worried by a herd of lions. I was always fascinated by the large M-G-M lion in the foreground. Judging by the uneasy expression on the beast’s countenance, his Christian had disagreed with him.

Across the hall from the parlor was the sitting room, smaller, cosier, with more comfortable chairs and an atmosphere of being lived in. In cold weather coals glowed beneath a black marble mantel in a small grate, the fuel contained in a tin coal box, with a hinged lid, japanned in black and gilt. Before the fireplace was a rug, hand-hooked, I think, on which was depicted a St. Bernard dog with a small cask attached to its neck. On the mantel stood a white marble clock whose hands I watched unhappily as they inexorably drew near the IX which meant that I had to go to bed.

The sit ting room was the heart of the home. Here the family gathered after supper, here I did my lessons, here the neighbors who dropped in to call were entertained. It was a pleasant, friendly room in spite of its wretched illumination. From the ceiling depended an ornate bronze chandelier, its gas jets shielded by globes of frosted glass which served to throw the light up instead of down. The only real light was provided by a lamp in the form of a metal statuette representing some goddess — Ceres, I believe — from whose head sprouted a green-shaded Welsbach burner. This singular affair, which stood on the centre table, was connected with one of the jets on the chandelier by a length of flexible rubber tubing. It cast a circle of radiance so intensely white as to be very trying, whereas the rest of the room was left in semi-darkness. If a large proportion of those who were youngsters in the ’80s and ’90s suffer from poor eyesight, it is because of the abominable lighting of their childhood homes.

Space permitting, the man of the household had a place of refuge, known as a ‘den,’ decorated with faded photographs of college baseball teams and collections of beer steins and pipes. If the household had an unmarried daughter, she entertained her beaus in a ‘Turkish corner’ which she usually rigged up herself.

Though almost any recess would answer, provided it was not within earshot of the sitting room, the Turkish corner was generally tucked under the front stairs. It was supposed to reproduce the languorous and mysterious atmosphere of an Eastern harem — within limits, of course. In a space the size of a closet, screened by a curtain of bamboo and beads, was a discarded sofa, somewhat Jumpy as a result of exhausted springs, which had been transformed into a semblance of an Oriental divan by covering it with a ‘Baghdad hanging’ or an old rug, though many household magazines printed instructions on ‘how to make an Oriental couch out of a soapbox.’ Beside the divan stood an Egyptian tabouret, inlaid with mother-ofpearl, bearing an olivewood matchbox from Jerusalem, a Japanese cloisonne ash tray, and a package of ‘Sweet Caps.’ (These were for the use of the beaus; really nice girls never smoked.) This setting for dalliance was illumined by the rosy glow from a hanging lamp of perforated brass set with blobs of ruby glass. A final touch of devilishness was lent by a bowl of incense, which filled the nook with its cloying scent.

(To be concluded)